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Buyer's Basic Guide to Orchestral Sample Libraries

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Zhao Shen

Senior Member
Buyer's Basic Guide to Orchestral Sample Libraries

A Basic Guide to Orchestral Sample Libraries · A Basic Guide to Orchestral VSTs

A Basic Guide to Orchestral Sample Libraries Author: StormSound Last updated/Changes made: Information for all updates is available in the GitHub r...
stormsoundmusic.github.io stormsoundmusic.github.io

Newly migrated to GitHub pages as of December 2020! I'll answer any questions/comments/input on the guide in this thread, but if anyone is eager to report issues or contribute changes, please check out the relevant pages.
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Last edited:
Zhao Shen said:
STRINGS

Hollywood Strings - EastWest - PLAY Library
Silver $250 / Gold $500 / Diamond $800
NOTE: EastWest product prices are often discounted up to 80%
--> http://www.soundsonline.com/Hollywood-Strings

STRENGTHS: Has a great vanilla orchestral tone with very useful mic position options. A huge selection of playing styles is available, and is very playable.
WEAKNESSES: Huge resource hog, has a few inconsistencies and bugs.
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Wow, you sure are generous lol! I consider Hollywood Strings (and Brass) to be the elite standard in the niche, but the Play engine just can't seem to shed the same old problems. Hanging notes just seems to be part of the package, and it's an incomparably inconvenient and aggravating syndrome. It just isn't going away.

Which makes Albion easier to reach for (thumbs up Albion I!!!).
 
Parsifal666 said:
Wow, you sure are generous lol! I consider Hollywood Strings (and Brass) to be the elite standard in the niche, but the Play engine just can't seem to shed the same old problems. Hanging notes just seems to be part of the package, and it's an incomparably inconvenient and aggravating syndrome. It just isn't going away.
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Which host? Which version of Play? I simply don't get the hanging notes problem very often with Play in VE Pro or Logic Pro. Not saying "never" mind you, just "rarely."
 
EastWest Lurker said:
Which host? Which version of Play? I simply don't get the hanging notes problem very often with Play in VE Pro or Logic Pro. Not saying "never" mind you, just "rarely."
Click to expand...

Cubase 7 and now 8.1. It's mostly on the woodwinds and brass, but it happens pretty much across the board. It's not a constant, but consistent flaw. I've learned to live with it, whenever it happens I just delete and undo delete the instrument.

To be completely honest, it's hard for me to be particularly vehement about it because I'm overall a more than happy EW customer, having owned and used at length all the Hollywood libraries for a couple of years now. I jumped on board the Composer Cloud a couple of months ago, and am quite happy with that as well.
 
Parsifal666 said:
Cubase 7 and now 8.1. It's mostly on the woodwinds and brass, but it happens pretty much across the board. It's not a constant, but consistent flaw. I've learned to live with it, whenever it happens I just delete and undo delete the instrument.

To be completely honest, it's hard for me to be particularly vehement about it because I'm overall a more than happy EW customer, having owned and used at length all the Hollywood libraries for a couple of years now. I jumped on board the Composer Cloud a couple of months ago, and am quite happy with that as well.
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I swear, and I am not blaming Steinberg, but Cubase users as a whole seem to have more problems with Play than other hosts. Wish I knew why.
 
EastWest Lurker said:
I swear, and I am not blaming Steinberg, but Cubase users as a whole seem to have more problems with Play than other hosts. Wish I knew why.
Click to expand...

It's strange, but FAR from a dealbreaker in my ears. To me it's the bad I have to take along with the good, the latter being the best sounding orchestral library on the planet (in my humble opinion). If sounds hang, small price...especially for those folks with Composer Cloud, which was one of the greatest in the box offers of the century imo.

Okay, okay, I'm obviously pro-EW! :inlove:
 
Parsifal666 said:
It's strange, but FAR from a dealbreaker in my ears. To me it's the bad I have to take along with the good, the latter being the best sounding orchestral library on the planet (in my humble opinion). If sounds hang, small price...especially for those folks with Composer Cloud, which was one of the greatest in the box offers of the century imo.

Okay, okay, I'm obviously pro-EW! :inlove:
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And we love YOU :)
 
Thanks a lot, a great page to bookmark.
I'm a newbie, as I started 2 months ago, and had a lot of trouble finding which library could suit my needs. I ended creating a note with Evernote, collecting informations. The best tool ever would be a comparative chart, with pros and cons (I know it depends on what you expect and what you want to produce), prices, links and so on...

Also, though I'm an Albion One user now, I found really hard to understand the different Spitfire products at first. It's easy to put face to face EW and Cinesample for example, but really hard to find the equivalent in Spitfire. Different products for different customer targets I guess.
 
Mars said:
Thanks a lot, a great page to bookmark.
I'm a newbie, as I started 2 months ago, and had a lot of trouble finding which library could suit my needs. I ended creating a note with Evernote, collecting informations. The best tool ever would be a comparative chart, with pros and cons (I know it depends on what you expect and what you want to produce), prices, links and so on...

Also, though I'm an Albion One user now, I found really hard to understand the different Spitfire products at first. It's easy to put face to face EW and Cinesample for example, but really hard to find the equivalent in Spitfire. Different products for different customer targets I guess.
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Thanks! I hope to get more time to update it further as time goes on - in the middle of a very intense university exams week at the moment haha! If you have any questions about libraries, feel free to send me a PM and I'd be happy to help. Just please, no VSL questions because I can't help you there o_O
 
EastWest Lurker said:
I swear, and I am not blaming Steinberg, but Cubase users as a whole seem to have more problems with Play than other hosts. Wish I knew why.
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Seeing as how Steinberg is the developer and steward of the VST plugin standard I would think that Play SHOULD work BEST with Steinberg software. Just sayin'......
 
EastWest Lurker said:
I swear, and I am not blaming Steinberg, but Cubase users as a whole seem to have more problems with Play than other hosts. Wish I knew why.
Click to expand...
I think you have it backwards, Jay. It is East West's responsibility to make sure that their software works with supported hosts. You can't expect Steinberg to do your testing for you. One could equally say that Cubase users have no problem with Kontakt, VSL, Sprectrasonics etc. :sneaky:

D
 
I have received some free stuff from EW, to make my stance clear, if it makes any difference to anyone. PLAY had it's bad days at the early stage. However, I've worked with PLAY for years now without actual project breaking issues. Actually, mostly none. Cubase 8 seems to like it, no less than Kontakt or Omnisphere. Actually, Kontakt has been rock solid until just version 5.something which started getting awkward and crashing Cubase from time to time. Cubase is also in fault, as it tends to crash when selecting tracks since 7.5 (and they are supposedly unable to trace the problem).

I now use mostly Hollywood Orchestra (Diamond), with an exception of woodwinds, for which I picked Berlin stuff.
 
Parsifal666 said:
Cubase 7 and now 8.1. It's mostly on the woodwinds and brass, but it happens pretty much across the board. It's not a constant, but consistent flaw. I've learned to live with it, whenever it happens I just delete and undo delete the instrument.
Click to expand...

I get stuck notes with many synths/libs when All Midi Inputs is selected on a track instead of the specific midi controller I'm trying to use. Not sure if that's the case for you or not.
 
Daryl said:
I think you have it backwards, Jay. It is East West's responsibility to make sure that their software works with supported hosts. You can't expect Steinberg to do your testing for you. One could equally say that Cubase users have no problem with Kontakt, VSL, Sprectrasonics etc. :sneaky:

D
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Did I not specially write that I was not blaming Steinberg?
 
The Woodwinds are the weakest link in the Hollywood libraries, far more hanging notes and glitches, though of course the sound is pristine. Which makes me wonder if it really is the Play engine to blame, since I really don't have much trouble with it with Ghostwriter, Stormdrums, MOR 2, everything but the Hollywoods.
 
Excellent thread - thanks for this - wish I had read it 2 years ago, when I started doing "music". In those 2 years, Play engine definitely improved and any bugs with HW series were rare in my case (Cubase, Logic Pro, Win/Mac). I'm looking for other string libraries for blending, can't decide btw Cinesamples and Spitfire basically
 
PeterKorcek said:
Excellent thread - thanks for this - wish I had read it 2 years ago, when I started doing "music". In those 2 years, Play engine definitely improved and any bugs with HW series were rare in my case (Cubase, Logic Pro, Win/Mac). I'm looking for other string libraries for blending, can't decide btw Cinesamples and Spitfire basically
Click to expand...

It's hard to go wrong with Spitfire, especially when used in conjunction with Hollywood Strings. It's as though they were made for each other.
 
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